Suppose you are a video content creator and you are at a point where you have to choose between Facebook and YouTube, two of the best video sharing platforms available on the web. In that case, as you have to focus on just one platform, I hope this article might help you make a decision.
YouTube is the go-to source for people who want to create video content because it is dedicated to that form for videos. In comparison, Facebook is majorly a social networking site, where you can add friends, follow brands and share content in different formats, which would be linked to articles, GIFs, Cat with your baby photos.
But over the years, Facebook has seriously tried to give YouTube tough competition in Long-form video content. And now it is at a stage where Facebook and YouTube both are neck-to-neck when it comes to videos.
Before we go further about picking up the best platform for your use case, here are some stats about both platforms.
There are 2.6 billion monthly active users on Facebook and it generates around 4 billion views per day as per this article.
There are 2 Billion monthly active users on YouTube and it generates 1 billion video views per day as per this article.
However, their metric of calculating views is different. While YouTube considers it a view when a user watches a video for more than 20 seconds, while for Facebook, this duration is only 3 seconds.
Who Should Pick YouTube?
Ideally, for most people who want to create video content, YouTube would be the best solution, as it is a dedicated video sharing platform. And since Google owns it, it has integrated YouTube Kriti neatly in Google search.
These days whenever you make a Google search, you are most likely to find its videos from YouTube in the search results, proving that if you are content revolves around solution to problems people are searching for, YouTube should be your pick.
Not just problem solving, if you are into creating leisure content, such as travel videos, or daily vlogs, short stories, comedy sketches etc., YouTube works fine because it is a dedicated video platform.
Users have YouTube app installed on their mobile phone, and it has become a reflex to launch YouTube whenever they want to watch a video. However, it is easier for users to use YouTube and Subscribe to your channel and get notifications to watch videos as soon as it is uploaded.
The User experience of the YouTube app has enabled users to rely on the app for consuming video content, and you also can benefit from it if you opt for or YouTube.
Who Should Pick Facebook?
There are still some scenarios where Facebook would be a better option for sharing videos. For example, suppose you want to share video content related to a particular region, like a city or a state. In that case, Facebook can help reach your target audience because of its social networking design.
People on Facebook are connected to other people who mostly belong to the cities they have lived in. Therefore, this setting improves your chances of getting your videos shared further, helping you acquire local followers.
Facebook also offers better targeting options, so you can boost your video content and customise the audience you want to target if you are impatient with organic reach. You can surely promote your videos on YouTube, but it is not as elaborate as the Facebooks Ad system is.
And since Facebook is mainly a social networking site, people use it to check on their friends and celebrities, what they are up to and consume their friends’ content, which lands on their news feed.
And since a lot is happening in the Newsfeed, video content is not a Priority. Instead, it’s the most engaging posts, be it Text or a Photo, that lands in the newsfeed.
It is why video content likes travel videos, and daily vlogs don’t do well on Facebook. You may have seen Travel Vloggers, Comedy Sketch YouTubers repackaging their long videos into small chunks and uploading them on Facebook. Because Ain’t nobody got time for that, on Facebook.
One benefit of using Facebook for sharing video content is that you can post content in different formats, which lifts the pressure of creating videos to please the algorithm.
You can post text or a photo and still keep your followers engaged or upload a less polished video. If you want videos to embed back to your websites, then YouTube seal is the best option.
YouTube embeds are much more cleaners than Facebook embeds, and you also get better options to categorise your videos on YouTube for better organisation.
